Find myself. Repeat.

I do yoga five or six days a week. I do it because I love it.  I love the practice. I love the teachers. I love the community. I know that if I didn't do yoga, the slow build of fatigue, emotional despair and inflexibility would take over. I know this because I've had periods of not doing yoga. When I neglect my practice, my body misses it for sure, but mentally I notice it more. I tend to get lost; a little adrift and unclear of where I am headed. I am more who I want to be when I practice. Doing yoga is not so much about fixing myself as finding myself.

When I first started practicing in my twenties, my practice was very isolated. I practiced my yoga and then I left, very quickly. Yoga class was an efficient way of re-centering during the tumbleweed storm of my twenties. There was very little spillover, at least consciously, from the yoga room to other parts of my world. I lived my crazy life, went to yoga a few times a week where I focused on slowing down, watching my breath, relaxing. Then I'd change clothes and head back into the chaos. I didn't really think about how yoga affected the other parts of my life.

Nearly twenty-five years later, I can see how different my practice has become. I'm almost fifty-years-old, so maturity naturally accounts for some of my evolution, but it's also the years of practice.  I notice when I am in a regular practice cycle that I am more calm, more patient, more kind-- to myself and others. Sometimes Lucia, my twelve-year-old, says to me, "Mom, maybe you need yoga." Neither Lucia, nor my partner Nancy has ever once complained about my going to yoga at the studio or doing yoga at home. They are in full support because they know it makes me my best self.

It's not that I learn something new each time I practice, it's that I reconnect with the lessons I've lost. Though I'm a much calmer, more grounded being than I was two decades ago, I am still vulnerable to the forces of stress and distraction that I have always been. When I practice and a teacher reminds me, for example, that "nothing is permanent" or that "breathing normally will calm my nervous system," it's not that I don't know those jewels of wisdom, it's that I need to be reminded of them.

I'm always been a high-intensity person. It's in my DNA. I get satisfaction and self-esteem from being a doer, making shit happen, taking on more than I can chew. I don't know how I got so lucky to make yoga my life's work. I can't imagine where I would be mentally, physically or emotionally without it. I mean, if I had chosen, for example, to become a day-trader (which I think would be super exciting and fun), I might very well be dead by now. As it is, I have several ventures outside of being a yoga teacher that keep me amped up. Being a high-gear personality, I need the daily reset of yoga to quiet me down. I know I'm not alone. Many of us need yoga or something like it to balance the crazy. I'm eternally grateful that going to work everyday is the very thing that keeps me sane. When I think of how lucky I am that this is my life, I simply have no words.